1. Field
This invention pertains to dental instrument delivery systems, sometimes referred to as instrument centers. Specifically, this invention pertains to certain structural improvements to such delivery systems which enhance both the usefulness and convenience of such systems.
2. State of the Art
Modern dental offices include, as a portion of the operatory, apparatus commonly referred to as a dental instrument delivery system or an instrument center. Such dental instrument delivery systems customarily include an instrument deck adapted to hold hand pieces in a location convenient for easy location and selection by dentists during operating procedures. The deck is associated with valving and control devices to regulate the supply of utilities, such as vacuum, air and water to the various hand pieces associated with the deck. Often an upper tray surface is mounted atop the deck. The hand pieces may be removably held by a storage structure at the front edge of the deck, and are connected to sources of utilities by means of flexible tubing. This tubing permits a hand piece to be moved from its stored location in the deck for use in a dental procedure. The tubing is conventionally adapted to retract in some way when a selected hand piece is returned to its stored location. In some instances, the tubing is retracted on a reel associated with the deck; however, a more recent practice is to provide the tubing with a coiled memory. That is, each hand piece is connected to the appropriate utility by means of a length of tubing which is normally coiled in its retracted or relaxed mode yet which is readily extendable. By "extendable", is meant that the tubing coils are straightened (or uncoiled) without undue effort when the hand piece is removed from the deck and moved to a location remote from the deck. Tubing is commercially available with coiled memory which persists after years of repeated extensions and retractions of this kind.
The upper tray surface of conventional dental decks is either flat or formed as an indented recess adapted to receive a loose tray. The upper deck surface is a convenient location for loose articles. The loose tray is preferred because it can be conveniently removed and replaced. Interchangeable trays may be prearranged to contain the articles required for a particular patient. Moreover, it is desirable practice for the removable trays to be sterilized before being reused. Convenient use of the upper tray surfaces has been somewhat hampered in the past by the necessity for reaching across the hand pieces stored at the front of the dental deck.
A problem encountered by the dental delivery systems of the prior art is the inconvenience or inability to sterilize the structures which hold the dental hand pieces. Placement of a hand piece into a recepticle necessarily carries contamination from a patient back to the dental deck. Available instrument delivery systems make no provision for heat sterilization of these recepticles or instrument hangers.
The flexible tubing with coiled memory conventionally used with modern day dental delivery systems, although quite advantageous from the standpoint of trouble free retraction, has several drawbacks. For example, the typical arrangement in use places an array of hand pieces at the front edge of the instrument deck. The several hand pieces are connected to utility sources by approximately parallel lengths of flexible tubing with coiled memory suspended from the back and beneath the deck. Accordingly, it is not uncommon for the coils of adjacent lengths of tubing to become entangled. Also, because the tubing is suspended from one end by the instrument deck and the other end from the hand piece, the dentist senses the entire weight of the tubing length at the hand piece. Moreover, practical tubing lengths; that is, sufficient to permit a dentist to perform necessary operative procedures, are necessarily also sufficiently long that if a dental hand piece is inadvertently dropped, it will inevitably strike the floor.
It has been found that dental decks currently in use can be intimidating to a patient. Usually the deck is located in the close proximity of the patient, and the patient develops the apprehension that any movement of his body may bring him into contact with the array of hand pieces stored along its front edge. In fact, such contact can occur and is undesirable.